The Perils of Executive Action

In January of 2014, Barack Obama, speaking to the press before a Cabinet meeting, said something that has come to define his Presidency: “We are not just going to be waiting for legislation. I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone, and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions.” In the thirty-one months since, in the face of congressional intransigence, he has used executive power to commit the U.S. to the Paris Agreement on climate change, to institute the Clean Power Plan to reduce emissions, to restrict new energy exploration in the Arctic Ocean and new coal leases on government land, to cap many student-loan payments, and to tighten rules on gun sales. In just the past few months, the Administration has made it harder for corporations to use so-called inversions to lower their taxes, required retirement-investment advisers to eliminate conflicts of interest, and made more than four million workers eligible for overtime pay. While Obama may be a lame-duck President, he’s acted like anything but.